IRature IRotes : 
^bc Selborne Societig’s flDagasine. 
No. III. MARCH, 1899. VoL. X. 
SELBORNIANA. 
Ckohamhurst. — The Selborne Society is deeply interested 
in securing places of sylvan beauty as permanent open spaces, 
especially in and around our great overgrown cities. The ever- 
%\'idening sweep of the metropolis has practically joined itself on 
to Croydon in the south, as much as to Brentford, Acton and 
Ealing in the west, and, in the words of one of their own local 
papers, “ Croydon is growing at a rate almost on a par with the 
growth of the mushroom cities of Western America and other 
virgin lands, rows and streets of houses pushing out in every 
direction.” Just on the outskirts of this advancing sea of houses 
towards the south-east is the still beautiful wooded hill of 
Crohamhurst, with a pebbly soil refusing cultivation, but offer- 
ing tempting sites to the enterprising builder of villas. The 
governors of the Whitgift Charity, the owners of the estate, 
offered to sell a portion to the Croydon County Council for the 
“ nominal ” sum of ;^i,ooo, “ for the use of the public for ever ; ” 
but this apparently generous offer, accepted as it was by the 
Council with almost tearful expressions of gratitude, does not in 
the light of later events bear quite such an aspect of disinterested 
public spirit. Nothing was then said about converting the 
other part of the Hurst into a large building estate, the erection 
of “ semi-detacheds ” and, generally, the vulgarisation of as 
beautiful a stretch of wooded hill and dale as may be found in 
the whole county of Surrey. As to whether this was mere 
accident, or whether it was design, one can only guess, but if 
the public, by having given up to them for preservation at public 
expense, those parts of the Hurst less “ desirable” for building, 
were induced to overlook the cutting-up of the remainder into 
building plots, the bargain would, one would think, have been 
a fairly good one, from the point of view of the owners. Fortu- 
